in June 1957; transferred to the CIA in mid-1963 and converted to a U-2G by December with a tailhook in lieu of a braking parachute. Utilized for carrier qualifications aboard USS Kitty Hawk and in 1964 off the coast of California, carrying spurious tail markings ONR and faux registration N315X. In early March, Detachment G pilot Jim Barnes approaches the Ranger too slowly and stalls just over the fantail. Despite advancing the throttle, the airframe strikes the deck, right wing low, tearing off the skid on one of the arrestor cables. The aircraft becomes airborne again, narrowly missing the island amidships, and despite an aileron partially jammed in the up position, the pilot is able to climb away and return to North Base at Edwards Air Force Base, California. The U-2 is repaired with a reinforcing metal plate added to the front of the wingtip skids and springs added to their base. 3 March The port side cargo door of a Lockheed C-130B Hercules, 61-961, explosively blows off the aircraft at 19,000 feet above the Smoky Mountain resort town of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, carrying one crewman to his death and another hanging onto a chain outside the aircraft as the fuselage decompresses. Crew chief Jose Gallegoes, 32, was holding a length of chain attached to his bolted-down tool box when the access door blew off. "Something like an explosion happened and I found myself hanging out of the plane", the San Luis, Colorado man said later. "I was hanging by the chain with which I was securing the tool box. That chain saved my life", he said. His fellow crewmen pulled him back inside the cargo plane, but there was nothing they could do for the as yet unidentified crewman who fell to his death on the mountainous slopes below, ~35 miles E of Knoxville, Tennessee. He had no parachute. A search was begun for his body. The departing door also sheared off the number two (port inner) propeller. The pilot, Flt. Lt. David W. Parsons, a RAF exchange officer from Wellington, England, was circling over McGhee Tyson Air Force Base when the door gave way. He immediately initiated an emergency landing, but found that he had no hydraulic control for the nose gear, touching down on the main gear before the Hercules settled onto its nose, skidding ~5,000 feet along the runway before coming to a halt. None of the